Brigade E5: New Jagged Union is a tactical game that places gamers in the small tropical nation of Palinero on the verge of a civil war. The mission: hire a band of mercenaries and take control of the deteriorating situation before the country finds itself in complete ruin.

About This Game

Brigade E5: New Jagged Union is a tactical game that places gamers in the small tropical nation of Palinero on the verge of a civil war. The mission: hire a band of mercenaries and take control of the deteriorating situation before the country finds itself in complete ruin.

The story offers players an opportunity to experience three different viewpoints of the conflict or work out the political structure to achieve their own goals in the global domination. Game play for the title is based on an innovative combat system called SPMÂ® (Smart Pause Mode) that successfully blends together real-time and turn-based games.

Unlike standard turn-based systems, Brigade E5: New Jagged Union does not use "action points" while in turn-based mode, but takes into consideration the character skills and attributes resulting in more natural and diverse behavior of units. Furthermore players can issue a chain of commands that will be carried out automatically.

The choice of weapons will satisfy even highly demanding fans, with more than 100 accurately modeled firearms, varied ammunition types, grenades, body armor and special equipment. Players will be also able to modify and upgrade weapons by adding various gadgets, sniper scopes, mini grenade launchers, bayonets, etc. The game provides extensive LAN and Internet Multiplayer modes, with CTF, Deathmatch and Fortress dynamic gameplay. SPM® is a brand new feature for the squad combat strategy genre. It gives all players a chance to command their soldiers at the same time, using even an enemy's pause.

To adress the main complaint, Yes the tutorial sucks I'll admit I had a tough time figuring it out I'll be honest the game is not friendly to newcomers however when you get the hang of it with some patience it isnt all the bad and you might enjoy it. It does have its issues aside from the tutorial, enetering buildings and controling the camera inside also sucks tand the second floor will disappear but not a bug! Just slow down on the mouse and if you lose your character press E and it will go to a first person type view then slowly move the camera other then that I like it just give the game a fair chance! P.S. an hour isnt long enough to figure it out keep that in mind with the other reviews.

Overall it was a good game at the time, offering many new features that other games lacked. But tons of bugs and poor implementation of some features makes this game inferior to more "modern" options such as the sequel 7.62 also available on Steam.

I remember playing this game several years ago, just before I got my copy of 7.62 High Calibre. I really like some of the features that Brigade E5 included, such as SPM and the weapons selection and customization. But the game was plagued with a lot of bugs that would make you want to pull your hair out. And even after all of these years, a lack of patches or bug fixes will have the game leaving a sour taste in your mouth.

If you like this style of game but want some "improvements", I would suggest you get 7.62 High Calibre and install the Blue Sun Mod (BSM) which includes the unofficial patch. That game offers newer graphics and better stability (mostly), newer UI and improvements to previous features, new weapons and locations, and a ton of other stuff.

Some of the biggest complaints that I have about Brigade E5:

1) When leaving items in the bank vault, for some reason any stacked items disappear. For example, if I have 5 boxes of M882 ammunition in the vault, coming back to the vault after a day or so of game time will cause the stack of 5 boxes to magically turn into one box. This tested same with magazines, armor, weapons, anything that was stacked.

2) Your weapons get dirty super-fast, to the point where it's simply ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. For example, just moving from one map sector to another and your weapons can gather up 3-9% dirt. Even weapons that were stored in your backpack and have never been fired will still accumulate dirt rather fast. It's as if your characters are spending several hours a day intentionally crawling through mud and muck, and shoving dirt into their rucksacks for no good reason.

3) The bank system itself seems flawed, as your money frequently "gets stolen" when the bank is robbed. Doesn't matter if you had $5,000 or $500,000 in the bank, every few days it seems a robbery makes all that cash go poof. So while the thought of earning interest is tempting, the risk of losing it all makes it useless.

4) The lack of a centralized storage method means you'll often times be hauling tons of stuff to the opposite side of the map just to drop off equipment that you plan to save for future merc hires. And if you need to equip new gear for a specific mission, that still means a lot of walking. When combined with the above-mentioned vault bug, you're pretty much better off just selling everything you're not currently using and buying it when you do need it (if it's even available).

5) Enemies tend to spawn in or glitch through terrain, sometimes placing them in locations where they can shoot you easily yet you can't seem to hit them at all. Or enemies that "hide" inside of terrain making it impossible to hit them, but they can drop out and shoot you in the nuts when they're good and ready.

6) Hired mercs give absolutely zero warning when their contracts are about to end. You'll be marching down the road to your next mission objective when suddenly they say they're leaving, give you no time to extend their contract. At least in 7.62 HC the game will pause and a warning message pops up informing you that they'll be leaving in 24 hours, which gives you plenty of time to either extend their contract or at least drop them off in a location where they can be easily found later should you choose to rehire them.

I guess I could actually keep going on and on with bugs, flawed game mechanics, etc. And that's likely because I am fairly biased towards 7.62 HC after having played it for a while. My general opinion is that Brigade E5 was a decent game at the time, and showed a lot of potential. If you're a fan of 7.62 High Calibre already, or just a fan of the Jagged Alliance games, you should play at least a few hours of Brigade E5 even if solely as a means of education and novelty.

In regards to my recommendation to play the game, I'll say yes it's worth playing, even if just to see for yourself.

Very similar to the newer Jagged Alliance games like JA: Back in Action and JA: Crossfire, in that it is a real-time with pause tactical action game. As other reviews mention, the tutorial is not particularly helpful beyond teaching you the most very basics of the controls, but I think most of the issues come from a bad localization, aside from a few irritating bugs. Quite difficult to get a hang of, but rewarding to master, and in my opinion deeper than aforementioned Jagged Alliance titles. As a bonus it runs great on newer machines and resolutions, even laptops.

Ive played Man of Prey, another game much like this, which I rate highly, so I really wanted to like this game, but unfortately I felt a little let down.

The tutorial is passible, it however isnt very helpful, and not particularly clear to the casual gamer on how it works. I had a few thick moments with it where the game is constantly asking me to hip fire, and i'm wondering why I cant do it. My character was crouched....duh!

There's a lot of be had in this and it does feel very much like an unpolished Jagged Alliance, with a lot more NPC interaction and side missions. The combat is a learning curve, and on a strong computer you can feel liek you're a little all over the place if you dont reduce mouse sensitivity.

I am willing to give this some more time and I would love to be proven wrong. I however spent my first 1.5 hours trying to get through the first tutorial, and then complete the first area. For the casual gamer, you may feel like banging your head against your desk after an hour of this. For the RTS/RPG dedicated people, there is possibly a great deal of delayed gratification available to you later when you have an established squad. I however didnt have the patience for this.

Do not, under any circumstances, buy this game. The concept seems good enough, it is supposed to be a RPG/"Turn Based" Tactical Game. Unfortunately the game is so riddled with bugs that I can not test that claim. I tried the tutorial to attempt to learn the somewhat odd control scheme. Objective 1, knock out the guard and take his key and gun. Done, objective 2, kill the second guard, obje...... wait, I can't complete the 2nd objective! It won't let me attack the guard! It just gives the same useless hint over and over. So.... buggy? I restart the tutorial. I make it even less far. The roof of the building doesn't dissapear after the intro text this time, so I have no way of controlling my character and furthering the game..... Don't waste your precious money, bandwidth, or hard drive space on this.